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This article develops an innovative multidisciplinary conceptual framework in the field of refugee entrepreneurship by combining the theory of mixed embeddedness with the concepts of intersectionality and agency. Focusing on the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship, this conceptual framework addresses the following questions: how is entrepreneurship informed by the various intersectional positions of refugees? And how do refugees exert their agency based on these intersecting identities?

By revising the mixed embeddedness approach and combining it with an intersectional approach, this study aims to develop a multidimensional conceptual framework.

This research illustrates how the intersectional positions of refugees impact their entrepreneurial motivations, resources and strategies. The authors' findings show that refugee entrepreneurship not only contributes to the economic independence of refugees in new societies but also creates opportunities for refugees to exert their agency.

This conceptual framework can be applied in empirical research and accordingly contributes to refugee entrepreneurship studies and intersectionality theory.

This study aims to draw upon entrepreneurial network resource and social identity theories to advance the understanding of LGBT entrepreneurial behavior. The authors focus on what resources are acquired by LGBT entrepreneurs from LGBT-specific networks, such as entrepreneurs’ associations or chambers of commerce, and why they might engage with them.

As an initial scoping exercise, Study 1 quantitatively examined the different resources acquired via a survey of 109 LGBT entrepreneurs from the UK, mainland Europe and North America. Building on these findings, Study 2 qualitatively explored why LGBT entrepreneurs acquire resources from and engage with LGBT-specific networks via interviews with 23 LGBT entrepreneurs (with representation from the UK, Mainland Europe and North America).

Study 1 indicates that being more involved in LGBT-specific networks is associated with stronger resource acquisition, particularly those that are relational and psychological in nature. Study 2 reveals that such networks can act as psychologically safe holding environments where resources that fulfil needs for belonging and uniqueness are acquired. However, certain challenges and issues arise when trying to meet all members' needs.

The findings underscore the need for LGBT networks that are run for, and by, LGBT entrepreneurs. Such networks allow LGBT entrepreneurs to be more authentic about, and empowered by, their LGBT identity in their business such that they can develop a stronger sense of individual and collective pride in being part of an LGBT entrepreneurial community. Yet, there is a need to understand the variety of identities and needs across the LGBT community.

The authors advance our understanding of LGBT entrepreneurs by connecting knowledge on entrepreneurship with that on applied psychology. The authors develop an original contribution by focusing on how LGBT entrepreneurs use LGBT-specific networks to meet important psychological and relational needs, thus speaking to the importance of developing an LGBT entrepreneurial community that enables LGBT entrepreneurs to express their LGBT and entrepreneurial identities.

Understanding belonging provides a better insight into the structural, political, cultural and gendered elements of entrepreneurship. This paper aims to focus on Mexican female entrepreneurs’ (MFE) experiences in managing material and affective aspects of entrepreneurial belonging during the start-up and transition phase to become an established business owner.

The narrative analysis is based on qualitative interview data with 11 MFE in Mexico.

The analysis reveals that MFEs’ sense of belonging evolves from self-oriented to more socially-oriented identity claims. In the former, the need to “fit in” and achieve material aspects of belonging is intertwined with gender and family responsibilities. In the latter, the need to “stand out” and achieve affective aspects of belonging is intertwined with validating entrepreneurial achievements by challenging gendered assumptions and helping others through the notion of “sisterhood.”

The paper extends the understanding of the relation of material and affective aspects of belonging as an “evolving” process from the nascent stage to the established stage of entrepreneurship. Within the evolving process of entrepreneurial belonging, a shift from material to affective aspects unveils a theoretical framework that relates belonging, gender and entrepreneurship in context. This process seems to regulate entrepreneur’s agency in what they interpret as acceptable while standing up against challenges and legitimizing belonging through the emergence of a “sisterhood.”

This article explores value-based motivations to adopt ecological entrepreneurship (ecopreneurship) practices and investigates how intersections of social identities such as gender, religion and ethnicity influence these motivations.

The study uses primary data from field observations, social media analysis and semistructured in-depth interviews with 16 owner-managers of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Indonesian craft sector.

The findings show that self-enhancement, conservation and self-transcendence values motivated the entrepreneurs to adopt ecopreneurship practices. Furthermore, the intersections of identities also tended to influence the entrepreneurs' motivations to adopt ecopreneurship practices.

The sample was limited to the Indonesian craft sector. However, the study has furthered one’s understanding of how values motivate ecopreneurship behavior. Conservation values were added to the values known to influence proenvironmental behavior. Furthermore, Schwartz's value theory, strongly associated with Western, individualistic, culture is suggested to be adapted. In Asian – collectivist – cultures, the values driving the entrepreneur are often more community-oriented than individualistic.

This study recommends policymakers to create more inclusive policies to foster the acceleration of sustainable development by equitably including both genders and encourages them to promote local culture, which motivates entrepreneurs in the craft sector to adopt ecopreneurship practices.

The study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature, particularly to the fields of gender and ecopreneurship, by considering the intersections of identities of the ecopreneurs. A research agenda for ecological entrepreneurship and family business researchers is provided.

Entrepreneurship research in the context of developing countries has typically investigated the ways in which culture, politics or economic institutions prohibit or enable entrepreneurial activities using macro-level surveys and deductive designs. In contrast, the purpose of this paper is to take a micro-institutional perspective to study these three institutions influencing entrepreneurial activities in such a context.

The analysis is based on inductive, qualitative field data from a challenging institutional environment, Tanzania. This includes two focus groups, one with experts and one with entrepreneurs; and 24 individual interviews with entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial activities in Tanzania are not constrained only by bureaucracy and arbitrary enforcement, access to capital, competition and consumer spending, but also by language barriers, negative media portrayals and gender disparity. In their favour, recent trade policy, opening up of borders and changing gender relations, has led to more opportunities, but just as important are traditional festivals, marital gift-giving and familial support. Entrepreneurs respond to institutional constraints in many creative ways, including undertaking entrepreneurial strategies, developing inner strength, joining associations, giving back to communities and skilfully managing relations with authorities.

The fine-grained discussion of the findings of this study specifically contributes to theory by illustrating the constraining and enabling role of under-represented institutions, such as festivals and marriages, as well as entrepreneurial creative responses that define everyday entrepreneurial life in a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to use the attribute “critical” as a sensitizing concept to emphasize entrepreneurship's role in overcoming extant relations of exploitation, domination and oppression. It builds on the premise that entrepreneurship not only brings about new firms, products and services but also new openings for more liberating forms of individual and collective existence.

Honing in on Calas et al.'s (2009) seminal piece on critical entrepreneurship studies, and building on Laclau's (1996) conceptualization of emancipation as intimately related to oppression, the paper explores different interpretations of emancipation and discuss these from a critical understanding of entrepreneurship. The paper then employs these interpretations to introduce and “classify” the five articles in this special issue.

The editorial charts four interpretations of emancipation along two axes (utopian-dystopian and heterotopian-paratopian), and relates these to various strands of critical entrepreneurship research. United by a general commitment to positive change, each interpretation champions a different take on what might comprise the emancipatory or oppressive potential of entrepreneurship.

As the emancipatory aspect of entrepreneurship has attracted increasing attention among entrepreneurship researchers, the paper formulates a tentative framework for furthering views on the emancipatory aspects of entrepreneurship as a positive phenomenon in critical research – which to date has tended to be preoccupied with the “dark side” of entrepreneurship.

This paper aims at exploring the dynamics of multiple identities of women entrepreneurs (WE). The paper analyse how WE do identity work in relation to specific identity regulations in the particular French cultural context. The objective is to understand how the entrepreneurial identity process of women is built through both confrontation and synergy with other social identities.

The paper opted for a qualitative and abductive methodological design. In total, 41 French WE from diverse business activities were interviewed. The empirical material was subject to thematic analysis.

The findings reveal the ability of these WE to deal with numerous and various identities. Their daily strategies to accommodate different roles depict how their entrepreneurial activity is intertwined with their personal and social life. The paper are far away from the picture of a monolithic entrepreneur without social dimensions. Given that, the findings broaden the too simplistic vision of WE as an homogeneous whole. Within this group of French WE, the analysis reveals that forms of identity work are along a continuum from accepting conventional norms and social expectations and integrating them in self-identity, or challenging them by accommodation or transformation, or, in turn, by redefining and proposing new norms. It also brings a nuanced understanding of complexity and multidimensionality of their daily life.

Finally by studying French WE, the paper identify new practices, new interactions between social roles which could be also relevant for men. In fact, the study challenges the traditional framework on entrepreneurship, which produces an incomplete view of entrepreneurs, by omitting historical and social variables. This disembodied vision of entrepreneur could not be applied to women and probably could not be applied to contemporaneous men either.

Immigrant entrepreneurship, particularly immigrant women entrepreneurship, has recently gained socioeconomic attention. However, this issue does not seem to have found proper recognition yet within academic management studies. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop a rigorous and comprehensive historical overview of the field, highlighting the key research issues that scholars are following to date and the most intriguing research directions worthy of further development.

To reach its goal, the paper develops a systematic literature review based on the rigorous criteria of 83 papers focused on immigrant women entrepreneurs.

Findings from this study highlight that some relevant arguments related to immigrant women entrepreneurs should deserve more in-depth investigation. As an example, a clear understanding of those factors positively affecting immigrant women firms’ performance is currently missing and it may help to gain knowledge that is able to effectively support such firms. Moreover, there is a strong need to go beyond the tolerance and proclamations toward the relevance of immigrant women entrepreneurs to really understand and manage the differences and ethnic resources that immigrants have and, therefore, overcome their marginalization.

This research enhances a clear understanding of issues related to immigrant women entrepreneurship. The advancement, in terms of knowledge, of such a pivotal topic for today’s economies helps both scholars and policymakers in better targeting education plans as well as in planning ad hoc support and targeted policies, management, entrepreneurship, gender, women entrepreneurs and immigrant entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the other end of entrepreneurship – the disassembling of enterprises by insolvency professionals.

Drawing on empirical material from major insolvency practitioners (IPs) in Ireland; the paper identifies three different narrative positions – “clinical market operators”, “blame the entrepreneurs” and “professional detachment/disidentification” – that these specialists employed to story their working experiences.

The paper suggests that IPs do not have a fixed narrative schema to narrate their professional identities, as they struggle to reconcile their professional acts with their personal ambitions. These findings point to a disconnection between the political rhetoric on risk taking and the acts perpetrated on entrepreneurs who fail, a central tension in the discourse on entrepreneurship policy.

The paper adds to the current debate on business failure, an area that is typically under-researched and under-theorised in entrepreneurship studies. By offering a response to calls for more multi-perspective research, this paper makes a significant contribution to extant interpretive literature on business failure. While the method of analysing stories is widely accepted in social science research, researchers seeking to replicate this study may produce different results; this is a taken for granted outcome of the method.

The analysis suggests that the current legislative impetus to ameliorate the implications of insolvency, driven by an aspiration to encourage second-chance entrepreneurship, faces resistance from IPs as they attempt to fulfil their professional obligations. In the absence of legislative reform, the impulse, perhaps even process necessity, of IPs to dialogically position themselves against failed entrepreneurs is likely to continue.

The paper's originality and value arise from its unique consideration of other end of entrepreneurship; offering novel insights into the difficulties IPs have in narrating their working lives.

Failure as an integral part of the entrepreneurial process has recently become a hot topic. The purpose of this paper is to review this debate as expressed both in research on entrepreneurship and in the public discourse, in order to understand what kind of failure is being incorporated into the entrepreneurship discourse and what is being repressed.

The research design is twofold: an empirical investigation modelled as a discourse analysis is followed by a psychoanalytically inspired deconstruction of the identified hegemony. Where the discourse analysis treats what is omitted, the purpose of the psychoanalytic analysis is to point out more concretely what is being repressed from the hegemonic discourses that the first part of the paper identified.

The paper identifies a discursive shift from focusing on entrepreneurial success while at the same time negating failure, to embracing failure as a “learning experience”. Second, we trace this “fail better”-movement and identify a distinction between the “good failure” from which the entrepreneur learns, and the “bad failure” which may also imply a moral breakdown. Finally, the paper attempts to deconstruct this discourse deploying Kristeva's idea of the abject. The paper argues that the entrepreneurship discourse seeks closure through abjecting its own, real kernel, namely: the everyday, common, entrepreneurial failure. This image comprises the abject of entrepreneurship, and abject which does becomes visible, however, rarely: Bernie Madoff, Jeff Skilling, Stein Bagger.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the darker and unwanted sides of entrepreneurship and extends our understanding of failure in entrepreneurial processes.